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Photography Tips for Beginners

After being a photographer for a number of years I started to cast my mind back to when I started. How do I take a photo, what on earth are these settings, ISO Aperture and Shutter Speed.

Now that I have a few years under my belt as a photographer I realise when you are starting out its way too easy to stay in Full Auto or rely on Aperture or Shutter Priority. The problem is using these modes means you are hindering your own creativity. So my advice is take the plung and go Manual.

Its Easy When You Know How

So you may be thinking that its easy to say use full Manual after years of experience, and that in essence is true, there is not replacement for good training and experience. However you can be given a helping hand on the way . I have drawn up a very simply chart to guide you with the basics of which setting to use and when.

Beginners Guide to Photography Settings Chart

Whilst the above chart doesn’t cover every possible thing you may ever photograph, it’s designed to give you a good starting point and get you out of Full Auto and into Manual mode on your camera.

If you would like a PDF  version of the above Beginners Guide to Photography Settings Chart please feel free to download and share using the links below.

PDF Download
JPeg Download

What does the F Stand for in F Number and F Stop?

The F in F Number, F Ratio or F Stop stands for Focal Length. 

(it should be noted that in terms of F Stop the F can also just be Focal when viewing light not through a lens)

Focal length is simply the size of a lens or a given point on a tele-photo lens such as 50mm, 100mm, 300mm.

What are F Number / F Ratio and F Stop?


Although many people use the these to mean the same thing,  they are in fact different things all together. To put it simply they are.

F Number / F Ratio

F Number / F Ratio is simply the ratio of light entering the lens aperture to the focal length of the lens.

“The diameter of  the lens opening and the amount of light entering, expressed as a fraction of the focal length of the lens” Ansel Adams

For Example

A 300mm lens with an aperture diameter of 75mm has an F Number of  4 or f/4
Or 300mm / 75mm = 4
A 50mm lens with an aperture diameter of 25mm has an F Number of 2 of f/2
Or 50mm / 25mm = 2

So in order to gauge the F Number and the size of the aperture and available light, just divide the open aperture with the focal length of the lens.

As you can see from the diagram above, the larger the F Number the less light allowed to enter the lens and the more depth of field you get (more of the frame will be in focus and less Bokeh).

F Stop

A measurement of light, the current light level in your situation is always classed as 0, reducing the light level is known as stopping down, so if you decrease the amount of light by the same amount of light available, you have stopped the light down by 1.

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